Monthly Archives: June 2012

Yesterday Rodney King passed away. A police brutality victim who was fortunate in that he was being taped when officers unloaded their frustrations on him. The acquittal of the officers who beat him led to the 1992 riot and created a ripple effect throughout our society. Unfortunately there continues to be all too many people who still suffer a fate similar to Rodney King at the hands of people who shouldn’t be police officers. A code of silence and a political culture that venerates police much more than the citizens they are meant to serve have made police irreproachable even in cases of unjustifiable murder. This is just one aspect of an issue that includes lawmakers, judges, and for-profit prisons that leads to Americans having their liberties violated and trampled while creating a permanent underclass that costs the government more and more money each year while there is no estimate to the toll it takes on the people it affects.

Last night I finally caught the season première of True Blood. True Blood is something of guilty pleasure to me so I didn’t really feel any urgency to watch it live but I’ll definitely watch if I’m up at 2 in the morning and it’s on. After watching the show I wanted to get the reactions of others who follow the show more closely and may have caught something I missed or has a unique insight into the show. My first stop was Racialicious where they hold a round table who live blogs the show and has great commentary, this however stuck in my craw a bit.

Tami: So…they’re going for the murderous closeted gay man/gaysexual predator combo? For all the kudos this show gets for diversity, it sure treats marginalized people like shit.

The KKK Chapter in Georgia feels like they’re discriminated against. They’ve been denied an “Adopt A Highway” program in Georgia because of their history, ideology, and the fact that not too many people really want them around. The Daily Intel‘s Dan Amira has the rundown with the whiniest KKK quotes possible from April Chambers.

“I don’t see why we can’t (adopt the stretch of highway),” she said. “Would it be any different if it was the Black Panthers or something? Someone always has some kind of race card.”

We are through the looking glass here people although it should be no surprise that even people who voluntarily decided to join the Ku Klux Klan feel as if they are the real victims. It’s the perfect incident to view the inversion of actual grievances into a political, and publicity tactic in order to insulate from actual criticism or charges of racial bias. We’ve reached the point where the “the only racists are reverse racists” movement has moved beyond parody.

Projection and the trivialization of racial inequality continues apace. Since the height of the Civil Rights Movement there has been a backlash that has taken the thought that black people have just been “playing the victim”. This line of thinking has led many to believe that legitimate concerns are just tools to be deployed to cow opposition which has been adopted wholesale by conservatives in order to advance their agenda. This cynicism in the face of legitimate suffering has impeded the ability of our nation to move past inequalities that persist to this day.